09TBILISI468, GEORGIA: DESPITE CONCERNS, GEORGIA WILL COOPERATE

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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TBILISI 000468
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/10/2019
TAGS: PGOVPRELPHUMMOPSRSGG
SUBJECT: GEORGIA: DESPITE CONCERNS, GEORGIA WILL COOPERATE
WITH EU'S INVESTIGATION OF AUGUST WAR
Classified By: Ambassador John F. Tefft for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).
¶1. (C) Summary. Senior Georgian officials have raised
questions about the objectivity of two members of the EU's
independent investigation of the causes of the August 2008
war. They have nevertheless pledged their continued support
for and full cooperation with the commission's work. Swiss
diplomatHeidi Tagliavini, who is leading the investigation,
acknowledged to the Ambassador the Georgian concerns, but
indicated she would take care to ensure the final report is
fair and focused on lessons to be learned from the conflict,
not political declarations. The next step is for the
investigators to distribute questionnaires to principal
officials. The report is due on July 31, although Tagliavini
indicated that she might need to seek an extension. End
summary.
¶2. (U) Heidi Tagliavini, who served as the Special
Representative of the UN Secretary General to Georgia in
2002-06 (i.e., head of UNOMIG), was named by the EU in
November 2008 to head a special commission charged with
investigating the origins of the August 2008 war between
Georgia and Russia, called the "Independent International
Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia" (IIFFMCG).
The group is led by Tagliavini and two others, Interim Head
Uwe Schramm and Deputy Head Marian Staszewski, and includes a
panel of a half-dozen experts. As part of the IIFFMCG's
work, Tagliavini traveled to Georgia March 1-10 with several
members of her team and met with officials in Tbilisi,
Sukhumi and Tskhinvali, as well as the Ambassador.
¶3. (C) In the context of Tagliavini's visit, Foreign Minister
Vashadze and Interior Minister Merabishvili both expressed
concerns to the Ambassador and other Embassy officials that
two members of Tagliavini's panel of experts had shown
significant bias against Georgia in their independent
writings. In particular, former British military officer
Col. Christopher Langton, who served as deputy UNOMIG chief,
published an article entitled "Georgia's Dream is Shattered,
but It Only Has Itself to Blame" on August 13, 2008 in the
United Arab Emirates publication "The National." Likewise,
Otto Luchterhandt, lawyer and professor at Hamburg
University, wrote an article entitled "International-legal
aspects of the 'Georgian War'," also in 2008, apparently in
Russian. (Both documents have been emailed to EUR/CARC.)
¶4. (C) According to the Georgian officials, these articles
-- written before either Langton or Luchterhandt was invited
to participate as experts in the IIFFMCG -- show that both
individuals entered into their work as investigators with
already formed conclusions about what happened in August.
Merabishvili added that both Langton and Luchterhandt were
expressly pro-Russian and anti-Georgian. He and Vashadze
both saw the inclusion of these experts as evidence that the
investigation itself was designed by German Foreign Minister
Steinmeier, who reportedly first proposed the idea (and whom
they assume to be pro-Russian and anti-Georgian as well), as
a means of casting Georgia in a bad light. The Georgians had
proposed alternate experts, whom they saw as more balanced in
their perspectives, including Svante Cornell of Johns Hopkins
University, but claimed that their nominations were not
QUniversity, but claimed that their nominations were not
accepted. Reintegration Minister Yakobashvili raised similar
concerns in the press in February; although he did not name
Langton and Luchterhandt specifically, the press did note the
same two articles raised by Vashadze and Merabishvili.
¶5. (C) Despite their concerns, both Vashadze and Merabishvili
reiterated to the Ambassador that Georgia still supported the
work of the IIFFMCG and would cooperate fully with the
investigation.
¶6. (C) In a conversation with the Ambassador, Tagliavini
acknowledged the concerns expressed by the Georgians.
Although she did not admit that any members of her team had a
particular bias, she took pains to assure the Ambassador that
the IIFFMCG's final product would be her (and not her
experts') report, and that she would take full responsibility
to ensure the final product was fair. She also said she
intended to avoid producing a political document, but would
instead focus on lessons to be learned from the war. In
terms of process, she explained that the next step was for
investigators to distribute questionnaires to key decision
makers in Georgia. The due date for the IIFFMCG's final
report is July 31, but Tagliavini said she might need to
request an extension.
TBILISI 00000468 002 OF 002
COMMENT: Tagliavini's Good -- and So Is Cooperation
¶7. (C) It is difficult to judge the perspective of an
individual from a short essay. It is true that Langton and
Luchterhandt level serious criticisms of Georgia in the
pieces supplied by the Georgian government. At the same
time, both also make serious allegations concerning the
Russians. Although they may have an inherent bias against
Georgia, it is possible they might have written the pieces
based on incomplete knowledge of the situation -- knowledge
that will presumably be improved considerably by the work of
the IIFFMCG. In any case, Tagliavini is an experienced,
knowledgeable and balanced observer of Georgia, and post
believes she will make a sincere effort to ensure that the
investigation's final product avoids privileging either side.
More importantly, in terms of Georgia's international
standing, the possible biases of two members of a larger
panel of experts pale in comparison to Georgia's overall
willingness to be cooperative and transparent with the
international community. The government seems to realize
this, and we believe it will indeed follow the pattern of
cooperation it has established with the Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch and others.
TEFFT

The information recorded on this site has been extracted from http://Wikileaks.org (Georgia) database..

We wish to express our gratitude to Julian Assange and his team for making this data available as it is an important public record.

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